It's the first week of Baking with Julia! I'm happy to be back in the groove of semi-weekly baking (BWJ will bake twice a month). I'm also excited to try new techniques and bake things I've never baked before. This week was White Loaves and it was hosted by Laurie and Jules.
I've made yeasted bread before but I can't recall rolling it out, I think the last recipe I did with yeasted bread was more a 'throw it in the pan' kind of thing. Anyway, I started making this in the early afternoon so I could use the end results for dinner. The beginning was yeast + warm water + sugar and you waited until the mixture got foamy. Then you started adding the seven and a half (yes, seven) cups of flour. My Kitchen-Aid hadn't gotten that much usage in long time. It made some scary noises but hung in there and gave me a beautiful ball of dough. The hardest part, for me at least, was getting the butter all incorporated, I had to do a little manual work for that. I sat the bowl of dough on top of a warm oven for the first rise and it worked really well. When it came time to roll out the dough for the pan, mine was not so professional looking, it was a little lumpy. The second rise was just as good as the first but afterwards I realized that one loaf pan had more dough than the other.
After 35 minutes in the oven, the loaves came out golden brown and very nice looking. The larger loaf was less photogenic than the smaller one but they both tasted great. I used the bread to make BST (bacon, spinach, tomato) sandwiches for dinner. Doug loooved the bread and I was super happy with the results too.
4 comments:
Your loaf looks fabulous and your sandwich tasty. Isn't it lunch time yet?
That sandwich is making me hungry :-) Your loaf came out nicely!
That is one heck of a loaf of bread! My mixer was straining by the end of the kneading time, too.
This really is perfect sandwich bread. I was so admiring of the few who had perfectly matched loaves. Most of us had one slightly larger one and one a little smaller.
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